Recently, Hangzhou Internet Court has ruled on a dispute involving the provision of live broadcast field control software services that infringed on the right of communication of works through information network and unfair competition, determined that the defendant's behavior constituted unfair competition, and ordered it to stop the unfair competition and compensate for the loss of 1 million yuan.

Kuaishou, the plaintiff in this case, is the main operator of "Kuaishou APP". The defendant is a service provider of live broadcast field control software. The plaintiff claimed that the live broadcast field control software service provided by the defendant was able to centrally control a large number of mobile phones to like, send gifts, comment, follow, etc. to the designated live broadcast rooms by using "Kuaishou" accounts in batches. The anchors who use this software can manipulate the "fans" in the live broadcast room artificially, thereby creating false fever and popularity. The defendant's actions violated consumers' right to know and choose, endangered the public interest, and constituted unfair competition. Therefore, the defendant was required to immediately stop the unfair competition, and immediately cancel all relevant Kuaishou accounts used in increasing false popularity and infringements, and compensate for loss of more than 4.56 million yuan.

The defendant argued that it had voluntarily deleted the disputed information on the website involved in the case, ceased the operations involved in the lawsuit, and successively refunded the users, and there was no malicious infringement. In addition, the alleged infringing software did not cause major economic losses to the plaintiff, and the number of Kuaishou accounts, number of live broadcasts, and profitability alleged by the plaintiff were not true.

The court concluded that the Kuaishou company obtains user visits, likes, comments and other data through the operation of Kuaishou software, forms users' use time and stickiness of Kuaishou software and products, gathers user traffic and monetizes benefits through the traffic, etc. These are all competitive advantages obtained by Kuaishou, and such commercial interests should be protected by law. The defendant used the alleged infringing software to help the Kuaishou anchors to make false publicity on the number of live broadcast followers, fans, likes and comments, etc., which caused consumers to be obviously misled, generated false perceptions of fictitious data and user reviews, affected the authenticity of data of the Kuaishou platform, undermined the algorithm evaluation recommendation system of the Kuaishou platform's live broadcast room and the true and honest interactive ecosystem created by Kuaishou software, harmed the legitimate rights and interests of other operators and consumers, and disrupted the order of market competition. Its behavior constitutes unfair competition.

From the perspective of this case, the live broadcast field control software has evolved from the initial operation of batch cultivation of virtual accounts without real names into creating false fans and traffic for network live broadcast. While facilitating the falsification of live broadcast traffic, it also increases difficulty and cost of platform governance, and also nourishes the dark and gray industry chain of online account leasing and trading. Regulations should be strengthened in accordance with the law.